Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a central office operator and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.

A Central Office Operator is liable for operating telephone switchboard to facilitate lines of communication both local and long-distance calls.

Primary responsibilities for this post include connecting customers while making incoming calls to proper person, operating the switchboard and helping customers establish local and long distance calls, observing signal light on switchboard, plug cords into trunk jack and press the button to make connections, inserting tickets in time stamping services device to be imprinted with accurate time, recording time of calls, requesting coin depositors for calls if necessary, giving out subscribers telephone numbers, calculating rates, handling special billing requests, making long distance connections, dealing with emergency calls, keeping the directory updated.

Core Skills Required to be a Central Office Operator

Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.

Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.

A central office operator should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.

Phone Skills:

Phone Skills are useful to present a professional company image through the telephone to the customers while making them feel well informed and appreciated without necessarily seeing their faces.

A Central Office Operator is required to master and project an enthusiastic natural tone to make both the customers and staff feel comfortable during the conversation while creating room for a productive and friendly exchange.

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Safety at work:

Safety is being protected from hurt or other non-desirable outcomes that may tend to overrule a situation and cause damages of different kinds.

A Central Office Operator must learn to keep the organization safe from different risks by developing a high sense of alertness that detects danger from afar and stops it before it causes risk, danger or injury in the organization.

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Appraisal and Evaluation Skills:

Appraisal and Evaluation Skills are services that allow employers to assess their employees? contributions to the organization for the period they have been working with them.

A Central Office Operator must creatively develop a robust evaluation process that includes the standard evaluation form, approved performance measures, guidelines for presenting feedback and disciplinary procedures to promote staff recognition and rewarding following a fair assessment and appraisal process.

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Adaptability:

Adaptability is the ability to cope with and adapt to unexpected situations in any environment and staying connected with a great attitude.

A Central Office Operator must shape the workplace with leadership skills that allow employees to adapt to the provided atmosphere and be able to give their best in the workplace while growing in their ability to become the best employees.

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Competitiveness:

Competitiveness is the skill of being able to compete as a team or a company with other enterprises in the same line of entrepreneurship and emerging as the winner.

A Central Office Operator needs creativity in setting the pace for the organization on the policies and factors that determine the level of productivity of their enterprise against their competitors leading to the growth of the business and the income.

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Handling Stress:

Handling Stress is the skill to balance the requirements of the job and your abilities or available resources in performing it.

A Central Office Operator needs to creatively learn how to schedule work according to the abilities of different individuals to ensure a balance that will not put an unsustainable level of pressure on the employees and cause them to accumulate work related stress.

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Results Orientation:

Results Orientation is knowing and focusing on outstanding results and working hard to achieve them because they are significant.

A Central Office Operator must understand and make it clear to the employees how important results are and the competitive and results driven market that the company is facing while encouraging them to remain focused on the results that every project bears without fail.

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Self-Discipline and Sense of Duty:

Self-Discipline and Sense of Duty is an active effort which helps in developing set ways for your thoughts, actions, and habits empowering your to stick to your decisions.

A Central Office Operator needs to learn the secret of fostering the development of self-discipline amongst the employees by clearly defining the expectations, staying in sync with the work related events and propagate result yielding ideas that employees suggest.

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Diversity Awareness:

Diversity Awareness is the understanding that people are different and unique in their particular way and respecting their uniqueness.

A Central Office Operator ought to successfully identify the various types of diversity presented in his company to be able to benefit from these individual differences in the hope of improving the success of his team and encourage the team members to become aware of these qualities and use them appropriately.

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Scheduling:

Scheduling is creating daily workflow charts that the employees are supposed to follow when working and submitting their projects.

A Central Office Operator must be dedicated to establishing and maintaining the schedule using either manual or technology methods to ensure it is always updated according to the tasks, the employees responsible or the time allocated to each task without fail or delay.

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Hard Skills Required to be a Central Office Operator

Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.

Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.

A central office operator should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.